In 2023, according to the Portland Press Herald, mobile home tax assessments increased by 90% in Brunswick, Maine. Some of the cause of growth in assessment value is purported to be due to population pressures in the region.

On the tail of the COVID-19 pandemic, certain populations moved from the large urban centers in the Northeast to more rural northeast states like Maine. As a result, places like Brunswick, part of Cumberland County, experienced more population growth than it had in years. In addition, these new residents had been earning urban salaries and this, plus the competition for limited housing stock, has been theorized to have driven home valuations up. This presentation explores whether population pressures have a similar impact on mobile home valuations.

Figure 1 shows the annual percent change in the 5-year estimated population for Cumberland County, in southern Maine, compared to Piscataquis County, a northern county. Piscataquis has been losing population over the past decade while Cumberland has experienced growth, most significantly between 2020 and 2021.

Figure 2 shows the relationship between population growth rates and change in the median price of mobile homes. The black dashed line represents the ‘y = x’ point, where the change in the median mobile home value is in line with the change in the county population. Orange points above the dashed line are examples where the changes in the median mobile home value exceed the changes in population. Blue dots below the line are points where the change in population exceed the median mobile home value.

Overall, the change in mobile home value seems only weakly correlated to the change in population. Indeed the correlation coefficient between these two variables is 0.16. Mobile home values are much more volatile and seem rise and fall disproportionately to population change. Nonetheless, there is still a relationship. The light green line is a linear regression line with confidence interval. It shows that a change in county population in the -0.5% - 2% range is associated with a greater rise in the median value of mobile homes in Maine.

Generally speaking, however, there is probably much more that factors into mobile home tax valuations than population change.